Most economic network upgrade

[Ferkner]

Where I currently live I can get 3gbps internet. This is great and eventually want to move to that speed but with my current network setup I wouldn't be able to access that speed since my entire network is gigabit.

 

I've been looking into upgrading to make it a fast network. Initially I wanted to go 10GbE, but the high cost and limited equipment means it's basically not an option at the moment.

 

The current setup is as follows:

 

Our 500mpbs connection comes in the house through the living room and plugs into the Bell Whole Home Modem/Router. From there I have it connected to my Asus RT-AX58U router which is what my home network actually runs on. I have a Cat6 cable going from the Asus router through the floor at the baseboard to the basement where it goes into an unmanaged 5-port Netgear gigabit switch. The basement TV stuff (Xboxes, Nvidia Shield, etc) plug into that switch. From there another Cat6 runs from that switch to another unmanaged 16-port switch on the other side of the basement (way more ports than I need). Here there are two computers, a printer, a QNAP server with two 1gbps ports, my work laptop and so forth that are connected.

 

Since 10GbE doesn't seem feasible without needing all sorts of SFP+ connectors and going bankrupt, I have been looking at 2.5GbE or even 5GbE if that is possible. I am figuring I will need a new router capable of one of these speeds or higher with at least two higher speed ports, and two switches for the basement since I would rather have one cable running along the baseboards rather than a bundle of them. I'll also need NICs for various devices but that is pretty straightforward.

 

2.5GbE switches seem easy enough to find, though they do seem to be pricey compared to gigabit and are limited to a few manufacturers. Routers seem a lot harder to find. I am wondering if anyone has any recommendations on routers that have only 2.5GbE ports or even one 5GbE port.

 

Or even an easy-ish solution to 10GbE that won't cause financial ruin. I know 10GbE is overkill but it's also more futureproof than 2.5 or 5GbE and doing something once is better than having to redo it later on.

[LapsedMemory]

5 minutes ago, Ferkner said:

Where I currently live I can get 3gbps internet. This is great and eventually want to move to that speed but with my current network setup I wouldn't be able to access that speed since my entire network is gigabit.

 

I've been looking into upgrading to make it a fast network. Initially I wanted to go 10GbE, but the high cost and limited equipment means it's basically not an option at the moment.

 

The current setup is as follows:

 

Our 500mpbs connection comes in the house through the living room and plugs into the Bell Whole Home Modem/Router. From there I have it connected to my Asus RT-AX58U router which is what my home network actually runs on. I have a Cat6 cable going from the Asus router through the floor at the baseboard to the basement where it goes into an unmanaged 5-port Netgear gigabit switch. The basement TV stuff (Xboxes, Nvidia Shield, etc) plug into that switch. From there another Cat6 runs from that switch to another unmanaged 16-port switch on the other side of the basement (way more ports than I need). Here there are two computers, a printer, a QNAP server with two 1gbps ports, my work laptop and so forth that are connected.

 

Since 10GbE doesn't seem feasible without needing all sorts of SFP+ connectors and going bankrupt, I have been looking at 2.5GbE or even 5GbE if that is possible. I am figuring I will need a new router capable of one of these speeds or higher with at least two higher speed ports, and two switches for the basement since I would rather have one cable running along the baseboards rather than a bundle of them. I'll also need NICs for various devices but that is pretty straightforward.

 

2.5GbE switches seem easy enough to find, though they do seem to be pricey compared to gigabit and are limited to a few manufacturers. Routers seem a lot harder to find. I am wondering if anyone has any recommendations on routers that have only 2.5GbE ports or even one 5GbE port.

 

Or even an easy-ish solution to 10GbE that won't cause financial ruin. I know 10GbE is overkill but it's also more futureproof than 2.5 or 5GbE and doing something once is better than having to redo it later on.

You can pick up the 4-port versions of these for ~$200-$300.  

https://smile.amazon.com/Firewall-Appliance-OPNsense-Untangle-HUNSN/dp/B0B53QTZSL

[LapsedMemory]

You will need to install your own software on it.  These are fantastic pfSense or OPNSense boxes.

[LIGISTX]

23 minutes ago, Ferkner said:

Where I currently live I can get 3gbps internet. This is great and eventually want to move to that speed but with my current network setup I wouldn't be able to access that speed since my entire network is gigabit.

 

I've been looking into upgrading to make it a fast network. Initially I wanted to go 10GbE, but the high cost and limited equipment means it's basically not an option at the moment.

 

The current setup is as follows:

 

Our 500mpbs connection comes in the house through the living room and plugs into the Bell Whole Home Modem/Router. From there I have it connected to my Asus RT-AX58U router which is what my home network actually runs on. I have a Cat6 cable going from the Asus router through the floor at the baseboard to the basement where it goes into an unmanaged 5-port Netgear gigabit switch. The basement TV stuff (Xboxes, Nvidia Shield, etc) plug into that switch. From there another Cat6 runs from that switch to another unmanaged 16-port switch on the other side of the basement (way more ports than I need). Here there are two computers, a printer, a QNAP server with two 1gbps ports, my work laptop and so forth that are connected.

 

Since 10GbE doesn't seem feasible without needing all sorts of SFP+ connectors and going bankrupt, I have been looking at 2.5GbE or even 5GbE if that is possible. I am figuring I will need a new router capable of one of these speeds or higher with at least two higher speed ports, and two switches for the basement since I would rather have one cable running along the baseboards rather than a bundle of them. I'll also need NICs for various devices but that is pretty straightforward.

 

2.5GbE switches seem easy enough to find, though they do seem to be pricey compared to gigabit and are limited to a few manufacturers. Routers seem a lot harder to find. I am wondering if anyone has any recommendations on routers that have only 2.5GbE ports or even one 5GbE port.

 

Or even an easy-ish solution to 10GbE that won't cause financial ruin. I know 10GbE is overkill but it's also more futureproof than 2.5 or 5GbE and doing something once is better than having to redo it later on.

Honestly, right now, I wouldn’t go to over gigabit unless the implementation would be very simple. Most home uses really, genuinely, just don’t need anything that fast and it makes things expensive and complex - as your are finding out. 
 

I would wait a few years until faster networking is more of the standard… hopefully just a few more years. Then it will be much cheaper and easier. 

[LapsedMemory]

5 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Honestly, right now, I wouldn’t go to over gigabit unless the implementation would be very simple. Most home uses really, genuinely, just don’t need anything that fast and it makes things expensive and complex - as your are finding out. 
 

I would wait a few years until faster networking is more of the standard… hopefully just a few more years. Then it will be much cheaper and easier. 

Fully agree.

 

Most people forget that a 4k stream only pulls something like ~50Mb/s at the maximum, and you start hitting 'law of diminishing returns' on gaming pretty close to that as long as your latency is stable.  The only time having 1Gbps becomes really useful is if you're self-hosting servers, of have many multiple items all trying to pull data at once.  

[LIGISTX]

41 minutes ago, LapsedMemory said:

Most people forget that a 4k stream only pulls something like ~50Mb/s at the maximum

This is even more then streaming. Full on Blu-ray’s in 4k HDR with uncompressed audio is 50-70Mb/s. Streaming services are MUCH less, typically ~20Mb/s I think is a good general ballpark for a Netflix 4k HDR stream. Not that I would say a 20 down internet connection is really enough for 4k streaming since your right at the limit, but point is, 1 gigabit is still LOADS more then is practically useful unless you very regularly re-download steam games and having 3X speed going from 1 to 3Gb somehow makes it worth the expense of the networking infrastructure and more expensive internet plan. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 10/19/2022 at 9:33 PM, LapsedMemory said:

Fully agree.

 

Most people forget that a 4k stream only pulls something like ~50Mb/s at the maximum, and you start hitting 'law of diminishing returns' on gaming pretty close to that as long as your latency is stable.  The only time having 1Gbps becomes really useful is if you're self-hosting servers, of have many multiple items all trying to pull data at once.  

Game downloads/updates are useful at Gigabit, but I agree faster is probably not worth it.  In my experience there is only Steam that consistently hits those speeds, other services are typically slower and especially games consoles don't get close to Gigabit.

[Ferkner]

Waiting probably makes the most sense. I can't really find anything that would suite my vision right now without it being overly complex or expensive. I'll wait a while until things come down in price and there are more options out there.